


Double Time

by leucocrystal



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Death, F/M, Introspection, No Dialogue, POV Female Character, Post-Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-09-10
Updated: 2006-09-10
Packaged: 2018-03-30 12:01:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3936028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leucocrystal/pseuds/leucocrystal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There may or may not be more than one way of haunting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Double Time

***  *  *  *  ***

 

Sometimes, she thinks Lilly must still be haunting her.

Not in the way she once did, with rivulets of sticky blood caking down the side of her pale face, catching strands of her golden blonde hair together in darkened clumps.  It’s been months and months since she’s actually _seen_ Lilly’s ghostly lips arch upwards in that trademark devilish smile.

No, this feels entirely different, but she’s sure she must be there.  Sometimes, she thinks she can almost feel another form of Lilly inside herself, spreading through her veins and contracting with her lungs as she exhales.  She feels it like a virus feels foreign—that invasive sensation, spreading throughout her cells.

It’s when she’s with Logan; she’ll reach out to touch him and feel what seems to be a second set of fingers, hidden just beneath the skin of her own, the tips shining with "Look At Me!" pink.  It’s only when she finally makes contact with his warm skin that the haunting sensation fades as quickly and quietly as it came; only when her lips find his that the second, gaudier, glossier pair just behind them dissolves into his kiss.

But if there _is_ a shadow of a certain dead girl inside her chest, she flits in and out of her Veronica-shaped shell like… well, a ghost.  When Logan kisses her, the last of that ghost is gone, and she’s left alone with the fact that she has no real excuses anymore.  There’s nothing tangible there to stop her from taking him all in, or from learning to fit into her own skin.  She can’t rely on Lilly to make her mistakes for her anymore, and she has to take all her own chances.  She thinks she can finally become her own person that way, and is glad to be the only one left occupying the space she’s in when she breathes him in.

Even though the second heart beating double time within her seems to want to change her mind, make her doubt him, she knows that she was never Lilly’s replacement, or anything vaguely resembling that to him.  Logan looks at her these days with such a crushing brand of honesty, she can’t bring herself to doubt what she knows he really wants.  She thinks, even before any of them discovered the truth, at least a part of him must have known how Lilly carelessly took advantage of his feelings.  She figures that must be why when he looks at her, he’s not searching for any other shade of blonde or color of eyes, and she can’t love him enough for it.

They’re the only two left now, but trust is still an issue, and she knows it all too well.  She trusts Logan far too little, and he trusts her far too much, though she’s sure he must know by now that he really shouldn’t.  Still, he doesn’t bring up a certain day at the beach, and she’ll certainly never volunteer the subject, either.  It’s almost like dancing; like sidestepping all these issues that she won’t let herself think of, and he is too unsure of to mention.

And so she waits it out, and the summer days drag by.  The air is heavy with the heat and humidity of the season, and perhaps just a bit heavier with the weight of his love for her that she won’t allow herself to really touch.

More than anything else, she’s afraid to really commit to any one thing or person anymore.  She can’t help but distance herself from Logan; no matter how physically close they come in the backseat of the X-Terra, some aisle in a supermarket, or the solitude of his now achingly empty house.  He may leave hardly any breathing room between them half the time, but it’s her heart she won’t let him reach; he’s already taken more room inside it than she’s at all comfortable with.

She knows he can feel her keeping him at bay; he’ll catch her eye whenever she makes a joke to lighten the subject matter, and she sees it in his eyes.  _I want you to need me like I need you,_ is what he keeps trying to tell her, but she smiles too wide, laughs too lightly, and tells him not to be such a girl.

She’s not waiting for an excuse because she doesn’t love him, she’s waiting because she doesn’t know what else to do; the magnitude of what she feels for him scares her more than she’s willing to admit.  He tells her he’s in love with her, and the plea behind his piercing brown eyes is only slightly changed— _need_ has become _love_ now, and she can’t bring herself to cave in to what she really wants.

In the end, it turns out that the other shoe dropping sounds more like a shotgun blast than anything else.  As the glass showers down on them both, she feels a pressure in her chest that has nothing to do with the weight of his arms shielding her from above.

She wants too much.  She wants to tell him how much she loves him, like she’ll never have another chance.  She wants to be completely honest with him for once in her life.  She lies there, feeling his startled breathing against her skin, and she can’t speak around the giant ball of fear that’s lodged itself in her throat.  It’s been growing ever since she saw all that red pooling beneath Lilly’s halo of hair, made gaudy and too bright by the lights of the pool, but it’s never quite choked her this badly before.

Instead, she swallows her confessions around it like a bitter pill, pushes the truth far from the forefront of her mind, and takes this as the convenient excuse it is.

It isn’t a day at the beach this time.

There’s no brisk sea breeze brushing the moisture from his eyes, and no tide to carry her away from him.  It’s a darkened living room, more broken glass, and a twist of the same old knife in his side that she’s become.

And before she’s really ready, he’s already gone.  Her father turns to her, tells her not to worry, and she tells herself the tears she’s blinking fiercely back don’t mean what they really do.

"You did what you had to, sweetie," is how her father phrases it, hugging her like he can actually make it better.  She finds herself wishing harder than she can ever remember wishing for anything—wishing he really could.  Like the intensity of her love for the broken down boy she’s finally lost could actually be squeezed out of her pores, if he’d only hold her tightly enough.

But of course, it doesn’t work that way.  That’s ridiculous.

She doesn’t feel Lilly within her anymore, in any shape or form, and she hardly even feels herself.  Rather than beating double time, her heart feels hollow and empty, like it hardly even beats at all.

So she smiles too wide, laughs too lightly, and tells herself: _This is normal._

 

 

***  *  *  *  ***

**Author's Note:**

> My third fic for the fandom, and my first attempt at writing from Veronica's perspective. Came about while attempting to finish a ficathon assignment, but didn't quite mesh with the criteria I'd been given, so I finished this as a separate piece instead.


End file.
